Washington State Candidate Filing Closes

Washington state candidate filing for the August 5 primary has closed. Here is the list. The state has no statewide offices up this year. For the ten U.S. House races, there are 49 candidates: 23 Republicans, 13 Democrats, one Green, and 12 independents. Some of the independents chose “independent” as a ballot label; some chose “no party preference”; one chose “Work and Wealth”; one chose “National Union”; one chose “Human Rights”; one chose “Citizens.”

Each U.S. House district has at least one candidate from each of the two major parties. Consequently, it is overwhelmingly likely that the November ballot for U.S. House will list only Republicans and Democrats. Ever since 2008, when Washington state started using top-two, the only time someone who wasn’t a major party nominee appeared on the November ballot for Congress or statewide office was once in 2010, when an independent qualified for US House, 7th district, in a race in which no Republican had run.

I see there are no Constitution party candidates. The Libertarians have a few legislative seats, and it looks like most of them will win the primary and move on to the general. So start raising money and knocking on doors.

The Citizens Party disbanded in 1986. The candidate, Mark Greene, says on his web page that he is using the label of that party, which he admits is disbanded. He says he hopes that the party can be revived some day, but there is no actual organization with that name now.

Not the Citizens Party I was thinking of. I was referring to the one formerly known as the New American Independent Party that ran Frank McEnulty for President in 2008 (until he got the VP nod of the Reform Party, but was still on the ballot in Colorado). Following that election they changed their name to the Citizens Party & had planned on running a candidate in 2012 using an online voting method similar to that of the Boston Tea Party and Americans Elect, but failed to attract enough support.

There are 205 House candidates vs. 224 in 2012. The 224 includes 7 candidates who qualified for the general election as write-in candidates, so there could be more House candidates in 2014. The 205 excludes 4 candidates who had withdrawn by May 19, 2014.

The number of candidates typically declines in mid-term elections, particularly among Democrats. Democrats may run in Republican areas (eg Eastern Washington) hoping to benefit from presidential and gubernatorial coat tails, or to show other Democrats that they aren’t alone. In mid-terms, a house candidate may be the top of the ticket candidate.

The distribution of senate elections are geographically and temporally skewed, with more Democratic-leaning seats up for election in the presidential-gubernatorial election. If there is an open Democratic senate seat, it is almost certain that there will be open Democratic house seats, as it is quite typical for representatives to attempt to advance to the senate.

The number of Democratic candidates declined from 109 to 83, and the number of Republicans from 101 to 92. This is primarily due to a decline in intra-party races from 38 in 32 races (ie 6 races had multiple Democrats and multiple Republicans), to 19 in 17 races.

This decline may be associated with the number of open seats. It is quite uncommon for a partisan to challenge an incumbent from his own party. The incumbent has better name recognition, probably more money, and was chosen by the voters of the district previously. Because there are two representatives per legislative district, ambitious newcomers will tend to run in the more winnable position.

There are 19 3rd-party candidates, an increase from 5 in 2012, including 12 Libertarians, 2 Independent Democrats, 1 Marijuana, 1 Centralist, 1 Green, 1 Framer, and 1 Socialist Alternative. There are also 11 independents, an increase of 2 from 2012.